A week before the Pope is due to travel to the US, the “confidential” documents of the US administration reveal that the country is fully in tune with Francis’ objectives.

“Pope Francis’ diplomatic legacy is still being built, but “pastoral conversion”, which is the hallmark of his pontificate is taking shape in important ways. The Pope’s grip on the world stage means his pastoral actions will have widespread political implications.”

Pope Francis looks ahead to the meeting on climate change in Paris. Dialogue needs to be stepped up in order to create an “authentic alliance” that can bring about “significant global environmental agreements”. The CEO of the Italian postal service gave him an electric bicycle as a gift

In a message he addressed to Archbishop Rino Fisichela, president of the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization and head of Jubilee initiatives who has been named as responsible for celebrations marking the “Extraordinary Holy Year of Mercy”(which starts on December 8), Pope Francis dotted all the “i”s an crossed all the “t”s.

Pope Francis received on Thursday, September 10, the Équipes Notre-Dame, an international Catholic movement for Christian married couples, in audience. “A happy couple can understand the pain of failed love”. He condemned “ideological colonizations” and urged support for the numerous wounded families out there.

''Whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.'' (Mt 25:40)

At Sunday's Angelus, September 6, Pope Francis invited every parish, religious house and monastery in Europe to respond to the growing refugee crisis by offering a place of sanctuary to families fleeing from war and persecution in their home countries. The Pope calls on our generosity and solidarity to recognise and act upon our common humanity.

Really? Is the recent death of a popular lion in Africa a much greater news story than the violent persecution of millions of Christians in recent years? After all, the lion is a species ranked most violent, and humans are frequently the victims. Some may even expound that the human is a superior animal, and thus deserving greater attention. This summer it appears that numerically the persecution of Christians economically, socially and physically has exceeded all past history. These catastrophic tragedies are widely under-reported, and at best back page news. Where is the outrage?

Catholic annulments look to many to be a simple Catholic divorce. Divorce says that the reality of marriage was there in the beginning and that now the reality is broken. “Annulment” means a ruling by a Church court that a union between a man and a woman, even if it began with a Church wedding, is not a valid marriage because it fails one of the traditional tests, such as a lack of genuine consent or a psychological incapacity to undertake the obligations, or unwillingness of one of the spouses to have children.

Francis states in his preface, on September 8, 2015, to the Latin-rite decree that he is partly making the changes to the annulment process on the suggestion of the bishops at the 2014 synod, who he says “requested more rapid and accessible processes.”

Pope Francis has substantially and significantly altered the process for those seeking annulments of marriages in the Catholic church, eliminating sometimes lengthy and redundant judicial procedures and empowering local bishops to make judgments on their own in “particularly evident” cases.

In his homily for Monday, September 7, Mass at St. Martha’s House, concelebrated with the Patriarch of Cilicia of the Armenians, Francis spoke again about the Armenian massacre which took place a century ago

Pope Francis made an extraordinary appeal on Sunday, September 6, asking every parish and Catholic community across Europe to house one of the tens of thousands of refugee families crossing the continent. Christian hope, the pontiff said, is "combative" and requires concrete action.

Pope Francis has made an extraordinary appeal to every single Catholic parish and community across Europe, asking each to house at least one of the tens of thousands of refugee families risking death to migrate to the continent from the Middle East.